LexisNexis Risk & Information Analytics Group
Jinfo Blog

31st March 2008

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LexisNexis(R) Risk & Information Analytics Group has released Accurint(R) for Insurance Plus, a data visualisation and link analysis tool developed to help claims and investigative professionals uncover, interpret and map relationships between entities by displaying a graphical chart of the connections between people, businesses, assets, locations and events. http://www.pr-inside.com/lexisnexis-r-risk-amp-information-analytics-r486683.htm. The purpose of the enhanced service is to help insurance companies validate claims and combat fraud. It uses mapping and satellite imagery and is intended to be used by claims investigators rather than by company analysts, thereby putting the tool into the hands of those on the front line of insurance fraud investigation. In recent years there has been an increase in the number of products using one type of data visualisation or another to improve the user’s ability to synthesise and analyse large or complex amounts of data. The most straightforward of these is through text mining, as in Dow Jones Insight. http://factiva.com/factivainsight/index.asp. LexisNexis also entered the reputation monitoring space with its MarketImpact media monitoring service. http://www.reed-elsevier.com/index.cfm?Articleid=1446. PR Newswire offers a reputation management service called MediaSense. http://collateral.prnewswire.com/MediaSense/mediasense.html. The use of mapping and satellite imagery by LexisNexis Accurint offers a different data perspective. Most data visualisation tools are used when text is too complicated, or inadequate a means of conveying information. Workflow diagrams, maps and photographs are well-known examples. In finance and commerce stock and other market prices are visually represented, as are economic data. As technology has changed photos have become electronic and maps have become satellite images. Exploiting these advances in conjunction with a means of linking location and other data from in-house databases has moved data visualisation to a whole new level. Patterns of activity can be detected by linking with these databases and by showing the results as images in real time and over time. Geographic information systems (GIS) have long been used in the insurance industry. Examples of their use include showing the addresses of insured clients on a city map to check that they are not all in the same building or clustered in the same neighbourhood. The locations of insurance brokers are shown in proximity to a target group of clients. These data linked to revenue files are used to plot broker performance. A simple use of GIS is to show the location of a client’s intended new office or factory in relation to natural hazards or resources. The insurance industry is used to employing a number of visualisation tools to help with analysis, planning, and trend spotting. This new product from LexisNexis Accurint is a welcome additional to the arsenal. May we hope that such tools become commonplace outside North America?

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